9601420 Farell This Americas Program award will support a collaborative research project between Dr. Cesar Farell, University of Minnesota, and Dr. Rafael Guarga, Instituto de Mecanica de los Fluidos e Ingenieria Ambiental, Universidad de la Republica, Montevideo, Uruguay (IMFIA). The objective is to carry out comparative studies of the performance of two boundary layer wind tunnels, one in Montevideo, under the direction of IMFIA and the other at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory (SAFL), Minnesota. The proposed program will provide prototype performance data for several of the tunnel components. Simulations of atmospheric boundary layers in both tunnels would be compared, with attention to the effects of turbulence and its scales on the mean and fluctuating pressures on building models. Considerable advances have been made in ongoing research to investigate critical issues in the modeling of atmospheric boundary layers, but there are many aspects of the techniques that still require investigation. Results of this research, which complements earlier NSF funded work related to the design and evaluation of the SAFL tunnel, would make a contribution toward a better understanding of the flow dynamics and the identification of essential modeling requirements. The benefit to the U.S. research effort will be in added manpower, and broadened scope of work to include different component geometries and scales, and the opportunity to advance the international exchange of scientific knowledge. ***
